Mobile phone ownership was a relative rarity 10 years ago. At that time there was about one mobile phone for every five people in the United States. Since then, mobile phone proliferation has continued relentlessly, with many markets nearing saturation worldwide. Parallel advances in cell phone technology have seen such explosive improvements in processing speed, storage capacity, connectivity, battery life and screen resolution that many modern cell phones are more computationally advanced than the desktop computers of 10 years ago. Despite the fact that mobile phones have become a ubiquitous accessory, however, they remain largely underutilized as productivity and collaboration agents.
Every business depends on the free flow of information and ideas to improve their products and services. Effective collaboration between people increases product quality, improves product or project development lead times, and reduces costs. However, effective collaboration is often difficult. For example, a user's work context, including the various documents, emails, links and context history involved in accomplishing work tasks, is typically confined to their office PC, which makes this information difficult to share with others. Furthermore, networking technology is not yet at the point where ubiquitous connectivity to support collaboration can be guaranteed. For example, corporate environments are firewalled, neither WiFi nor cellular data network coverage is universal, and users must opt into cellular data plans at additional cost.